motech industries

The largest solar cell manufacturer in Taiwan, Motech Industries has added to a major restructuring of the company with the closure of its 1.1GW solar cell manufacturing plant in Taoyuan, southern Taiwan and a 916 reduction in full-time employees by 28 January 2019.

We have tracked the annual R&D spending of 12 key publicly listed PV module manufacturers over the last 10 years. We present our new methodology with a broader scope which reveals record levels of investment in solar innovation.

The majority of Taiwanese solar industry companies that are public listed on the TSE have recently reported December, 2017 sales figures, highlighting how elusive the recovery in sales has been in 2017.

Three of Taiwan’s merchant solar cell and module producers, Gintech Energy Corp, Neo Solar Power (NSP) and SolarTech Energy have separately announced the suspension of trading of their stocks on the Taiwan Stock Exchange beginning on October 16.

A basket of publicly-listed solar cell and module manufacturers on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) have continued to build sales momentum through September as demand increased for products from China, Europe and the US.

Taiwan-based PV cell and module manufacturer Motech Industries plans to deploy 400MW of solar in Pingtung County in southern Taiwan, according to a company executive, while it is also in early talks with other cell makers about setting up a module factory.

A basket of publicly-listed solar cell and module manufacturers on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) continued to experience a recovery in sales in June as China reaches a peak in utility-scale projects under the 2017 feed-in tariff and benefit from fears over the US ITC ‘Section 201’ case and the potential impact of higher module duties in 2018.

China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) recently reported that the country added 7.21GW of solar PV in the first quarter of 2017, roughly 70MW more than in the prior year period, yet sales by many Taiwan based suppliers of solar cell and modules have remained between 30 to 40% lower than the prior year period.

Many key PV manufacturers in Taiwan are still reporting monthly sales in February, 2017 that are well below the levels set in the first half of 2016, due primarily to the expected boom in China’s downstream PV market, which has yet to take hold.